Using 2.5" SATA drives for RAID

[Keet]

Has anyone had experience with using 2.5" 7200 RPM drives for raid or recommend a brand?

I'm looking to build a 1U server to handle a bit of IO and since it would be faster to have 8x 2.5" 7k RPM disks than 4x 3.5" 7k RPM disks... (more spindles, shorter stroke time..?)

Buuut if one is looking to avoid the premium that SAS or 10K drives carry, are there 2.5" SATA disks that other people have working in raid?

say 8x 500GB Scorpio blacks? or maybe Hitachi? Samsung?

Thanks

 

[adi]

Depends on I/O requirements, size requirements, HW/SW RAID, budget, etc.

Considering that 3.5" drives are $40-$90 cheaper than equivalent 2.5" drive right now, you should have compelling reasons to go that route.

 

[mwroobel]

One thing to keep in mind is that non-enterprise 2.5" drives are not made for 24/7 server work. If you are looking for heavy IO and sequential speed, I think you will be better off with 4x 3.5" than 8x 2.5" if you are going with consumer level drives. If you care more about sequential streaming speed, the higher bit density of say 4x 3TB 7200RPM Seagate 1TB/platter drives will compare favorably vs for example 8x500gb 2.5" . The Seagates are capable of 160+ MB/s Read/Write x4 give you 640+ MB/s ( http://www.storagereview.com/seagate_barracuda_3tb_review_1tb_platters_st3000dm001 ). The WD Black 500GB's give just over 100 MB/s Read//Write x8 give you ~800 MB/s ( http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_scorpio_black_500gb_review_wd5000bekt ) . As for IOPs and random access, a lot will depend on what controller is attached to the drives and how it queues the data.

 

[sinisterDei]

What kind of I/O? If it's highly transactional, then additional spindles may not be your fastest route to increased performance. A relatively small SSD array will easily beat the pants off any spindle-based array for highly transactional, small bursts of data type workloads.

And I second what someone else mentioned; the laptop drives are not built with 24x7 in mind, so that's something to keep in the back of your mind. That said, many a server is built with standard SATA drives and works plenty fine.

 

[dustNbone]

+1 This will totally depend on what type of IO you mean. Even a pair of SSDs will tool 8x7200 rpm drives on many loads. One very nice SSD might do the job, and save you the cost of an expensive RAID controller. The performance gap between SSD and HDD is really that large, on certain (but not uncommon) workloads.